Plant more trees to fight climate change - An Indian State's Initiative to plant 2.3 billion trees

Article Released on June 06, 2019 Originally on LinkedIn platform

Many cities across the world are increasingly planting trees to protect themselves from adverse climate change impacts like heatwaves and floods. Urban officials and environmental experts say planting trees is not only beneficial to the environment but also improves people's physical and mental health. Planting more trees helps in reducing air pollution, improving the urban environment and reducing the impacts of climate change.

"Trees and green spaces lower stress levels and encourage people to exercise and socialise more"

---World Economic Forum

However, as the world is getting more and more urbanised, demand for housing and transport is putting pressure on green spaces, which will lead to the replacement of green surfaces with concrete surfaces. It is essential for each city/state to preserve a sufficient amount of green cover to maintain environmental stability and ecological balance.

It is crucial for the city and state authorities to plan interventions that ensure people's health and safety during these extreme climate change events. India has a long history of facing severe heatwaves in summer. The below image (Image source: DownToEarth) clearly shows that 'heat stroke' is the third major reason for natural deaths in India from the period 2000-2014.

The situation got worse in 2015. Especially, the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana recorded the highest number of deaths due to severe heatwaves (around 2500 people died due to the 2015 heatwave alone in these two states).

To address the extreme climate change impacts especially the heatwaves, the Government of Telangana started a program called "Telanganaku Harita Haram"(TKHH) in 2015 with an ambitious plan to plant 2.3 billion trees by 2019 with a budget of INR 5500 crores (USD 795 million). The program aims to increase the state's forest cover from 24% in 2015 to 33% of the total geographical area of the state in 2019 as envisaged in the National Forest Policy of India,1988. The National Forest Policy (1988) recommends that 33% of the country should be brought under tree cover/green cover to maintain environmental stability and ecological balance (India as of 2015 had 21.34% of forest cover). The primary objectives of the TKHH program are to rejuvenate degraded forests, protect these forests against encroachment, fire and grazing.

To implement such a vast-scale program, the government decided to partner with various state & central departments and private bodies like NGO's. The Government of Telangana ran campaigns with slogans like 'Plant a Tree, Plant a Life', 'Don't let our future dry up' & 'Live for Today, Plant for Tomorrow' to encourage the citizens of the state to participate in the ambitious plan of planting 2.3 billion trees. People from different walks of life, government agencies, officers, prominent citizens and public representatives were invited and encouraged to participate in the event. The government designed the 'District Action Plan' and 'Mandal level Plans' to implement the TKHH program. These plans give detailed information about various aspects of the program like the number of seedlings required, the target of each district/mandal, number of sites, location of sites and assigned roles and responsibilities of each department involved in the TKHH program.

To ensure the samplings are protected, a protection committee was formed to guard the plantations. To monitor the maintenance of the plants, they started geo-tagging every seedling they planted. Out of 675 million plantations, 644 million plantations were successfully geo-tagged by the end of 2018.

Though the Government of Telangana could achieve only 29% of their set target in the first four years of the project, the government authorities showed positive consent in achieving their goal of 2300 million plantations by the end of 2019. To ensure that the process is fair and transparent, the Government of Telangana set up a live dashboard for the people to see the progress of TKHH program.

The above image shows a sample image of how the dashboard looks. It gives details of each district regarding the target of each district, how many seedlings planted till now, the number of seedlings geo-tagged, and how many seedlings to be planted to reach the target. It gives reports on various aspects of the TKHH program, even on a daily basis.

An article by 'The Times of India' mentioned that the deaths due to heatwaves in Telangana declined to 700 in 2016, 375 in 2017 and 20 in 2018. I don't claim that the TKHH program is the sole reason for the decrease in casualties due to heatwaves in Telangana, but I can say that the increase in tree cover is always a beneficial factor to humans as well as environment. It is a known fact, and many scientists around the world already proved it.

The ambitious target of achieving 2300 million plantations by the end of 2019 looks impossible as they need to plant 1625 million seedlings in one year. However, the good part is, they are still planting trees every day, which will eventually benefit humankind and our environment. Keeping aside the targets, in view of counter-climate change actions, 'The Honorable Cheif Minister of Telangana, K. Chandrashekar Rao' deserves applause for starting a program like TKHH in Telangana. The government's effort to fight climate change is appreciative, and all other states in India as well as all over the world should emulate such projects to save our planet Earth.

Sai Ganesh Veeravalli